We need to talk about the emotional experience of branding yourself as a creative, y’all.

It’s one of the most popular topics in all the writer’s groups I’m in.

Every few days it comes up again:

“Why is branding myself so hard?”

“Why does it take so long?”

“Whenever I have a good idea, someone points out it’s bad, and I immediately deflate!”

That last one is especially huge.

You probably know the feeling.

You have an idea that’s SO GOOOD that you think over for days and get more and more excited. It works in so many ways! There are so many different ideas you could plug into it. It’s so smart and pithy and and and —

Then you show it to someone and… they promptly riddle it with holes.

So you cry a lot and go back to the drawing board.

Ugh. It’s my Achilles heel too!

But can I tell you a secret?

This is also why when I know in my gut something’s good-but-different, I sometimes don’t tell anyone until I put it all out there so it makes sense in context.

The title of “The Wordshops”? I didn’t tell anyone for a year.

Photo shoot concepts? Silencio.

Structure for my Wordshops sales video? The only people who knew about it were me and my videographer.

Blog posts? It’s just me and Medium.

Why?

Because imagine if Picasso showed his first attempts at cubism to a fellow artist who said:

“That’s so ugly. I don’t get it. No one will like or buy this. Where’s the poetry? Where’s the feeling?!”

I suspect we’re not actually all BAD at branding ourselves as pro creatives. It’s just hard to define ourselves without the protective layer of someone else to take on the consequences for whatever we come up with.

Here’s a truth to chew over: Everyone’s a critic and folks won’t always get it.

After all: Why do we always tell clients not to show the final product to 50+ people before launch? Because there’s such a thing as “too many cooks in the kitchen”.

(And no offense, but your Aunt Barbara who told you your logo was dumb doesn’t know the first thing about branding.)

There were, are, and will be moments when you’ve gotta trust what’s right.

That’s what personal branding as a creative and artist is overall, in my opinion. An exercise in deep self trust.

Prepare to do what you want that feels good and right, develop a stomach for the potential range of responses, and you’re good to go.

2017 in HWeiss Landia was, above all, a year of talking and writing about things I genuinely give a damn about.

(It was also a bizarre, tumultuous, topsy turvy, exhausting year for a number of us — but one of the greatest gifts of being alive and creative at a time like this is the response it inspires, and the quests it sends us on.

I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but in my case, 2017 seems to have flipped on my “transparency switch”.)

Of course, there was other stuff happening beyond my intimate relationship with my keyboard and my blog, too.

I put out a course. I released 50% of my clientele. I spoke on stages in Brooklyn, Austin, and Phoenix. I spent a ton of time talking to newbie writers, and veteran entrepreneurs. I stopped taking sugar in my coffee.

But more than that? Sometime early last year, when I stared at my semi-populated blog, I realized something: I was bored.

Omg. Sooo bored with what I was writing.

Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed all the pieces I wrote before 2017 began; they felt deep and gratifying and important to pen.

But I was spent. I’d felt I’d hit all the “stuff copywriters/writers should write about” notes I wanted to hit, and felt ready to move on.

But what was next? I wasn’t sure.

So I tilted my platform a little bit, and decided to scrub away the “Serious writers talk about This Serious Thing” must-do’s on my list, and started gabbing more about the stuff that mattered to me — about experiences, about point of view, personal philosophy, and creativity rather than conversions and sales.

(Not that I ever talked too much about those two things — but there are about a billion extra smart people who do. So if that’s what you’re looking for, head over here or here.)

That began to leak into everything I did; from my blogs, to the way I taught, to what I shared on podcasts and interviews.

So, after spending the last couple of weeks chewing the cud away from my desk, I decided to take a peek back at the things I wrote and said in 2017 — and the tales behind them.

What was I most proud of?

What surprised me?

What did I wish I’d done differently?

And now in the spirit of the only roundup season NOT involving cowboys — A.K.A. END OF YEAR ROUNDUP SEASON IN THE BLOGOSPHERE — I present these musings to you.

Without further ado, I present the 10 favorite things I made in 2017 — and the stories behind them.

To date, this is probably the strongest interview I’ve ever done on the subject of copywriting.

I say that both because on this blessed interview my accursed “ums” and “yknows?” are fewer and farther between, aaaand because my parents listened and immediately called to excitedly tell me that finally, after 6 years, “We have a better idea of what you do now!”

One thing also missing from this story, however, was that I showed up to the interview 15 minutes late and flustered as all hell. I’d gotten the time of the damn interview wrong. Blessedly though, Kira Hug, co-founder of The Copywriter Club and an old friend of mine, pinged me to find out where I was before banishing me from her roster forever. So the Hillary you hear here is a little extra anxious, but extra excited to be there all the same.

This was also the first time I’ve ever talked in-depth about the connections I make between the music I love and the words I write — and no one laughed at me or called me a stupidhead. That felt unexpectedly awesome.

“I think music, in that sense, music can teach us a lot as writers, because when you get to a certain point with your writing and your craft, it doesn’t necessarily become about the individual words or even the sentences. It’s about texture and rhythm, and you see things more in block form.

You’re thinking about it in a sense of how people are going to react to these ideas, not just the ideas themselves, and I think hip hop is a great example of how to do that.”

This post was probably the least-read of the entire year, but it was still near and dear to my heart.

I’d actually written the first draft of this post at my former business partner’s kitchen table on a snowy afternoon in 2014, but it was much darker, and much more shame-faced than the version you see here.

Since then, time has not only made me tougher when being open about failure, but it’s forced me to continue to face it down and acknowledge when it happens so I can learn the most from it.

This post was also a chance for me to talk about my, uh, background in writing fanfiction, and how it helped me get some creative faceplants out of my system early.

(This was much to the delight of Copywriter Club Podcast co-host Rob Marsh, who is determined to find my old fanfiction pen name to this day. I can assure you: He will never succeed.)

“The opposite of creative shame is creative courage. And you can’t have one without the other.”

This was the first in what would unwittingly become a series of pieces on the reality of entrepreneurship and the more physiologically and psychologically painful effects of pushing oneself to the limit.

It popped into my head at 10 PM on some busy Tuesday. My partner was out with co-workers for the night and so I used those extra few hours to do what I often do when I’m given the wiggle room of additional time:

I was working late.

At the time I was putting the finishing touches on my course and launch plan, and figuring out how to restructure my business.

I was not feeling good. In fact I was so tired I felt almost ill… but I had to keep going.

It’s a piece on willing things into existence that I’d probably rewrite knowing what I know now, and seeing where it led me— but it’s a piece I’m proud of all the same.

“Sweat begets ease eventually, if you know where you’re going.

That’s why, for every nauseous moment on your living room floor, for every sobbing dancer collapsing just offstage, there are 100 moments of pride, accomplishment, and certainty in one’s own abilities.

For every question of “Why do I do this?” the answer comes back the same, but stronger: “You can quit. But if you love yourself, and the future you’re creating enough, you won’t.”

Some posts take time and effort to chip away at, while others flow out of me like clear, cold water. This post — and also the only piece I wrote in June of this year — was the latter.

I wrote this one after comments from a friend forced me to examine why the hell I always keep going.

It’s not as though Imposter Syndrome or self-doubt pass over me. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect I’m one of their favorite targets. But the struggle against such demons isn’t ended by a sudden magical eradication of the hate and disappointment and shame that threaten to eat you up.

It never ends. We can never win — only hold the line.

So the question becomes: How do we do that?

And the answer is… what I wrote about in this post.

“There’s the old adage you’ve seen on countless inspiring statues and high school senior quotes:

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

Similarly, self-belief is not the absence of self-doubt.

My self doubt is my grey ghost, the monkey on my back. It is excruciatingly painful, and it comes complete with limitless energy and an unstoppable will to slow me down so it can eventually tear me apart, piece by piece.

I had no choice but to find a way to stand against it — or I’d surely perish.

But it didn’t feel heroic to me. It didn’t feel strong. Some days it feels like hanging from a penthouse balcony by my fingertips.”

Despite the fact I recorded this interview with Allie & Adam of The Wonder Jam on the first day of The Wordshops launch…

Despite the fact I’d gotten barely any sleep the night before…

Despite the fact I’d slept so little because I wound up sleep walking that night for the first time in my life…

… This interview was still one of the best things I recorded this year. Not only because I adore The Wonder Jam (they designed the sales page for The Wordshops), but our interview turned into open season on connecting pop culture to branding mastery.

That’s right: They let me riff on two of my favorite icons the world loves to hate — Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

“ Hillary tells us about how Kim Kardashian has informed her as a business owner — “She’s a branding master, she just is.”

Fortunately, I had my dear friend and brilliant creative Juliet Warren by my side who carried me through about 3 hours of totally unusable scripted footage that I singlehandedly ruined by looking down at my makeshift telepromter, and into a version borne of some handy Q&A.

I think this version works way better anyway.

“I wish someone had told me when I was getting started that my strangeness, the way I choose to speak about things, the slang I tend to use, the language I discuss things with when I talk to my clients — that all of that mattered. That all of that was supposed to be coming through in my copy. Because if it doesn’t? Then you’re getting lost, and the last thing you wanna do is get lost.

Because you have people who need you, who’ve been waiting for you. And if you don’t introduce yourself properly? They’re not going to be able to find you.”

This post was a big, fat, squirmy, 9-minute-read uncomfortable practice in vulnerability for me.

Because guess what happens when you spend an entire year working as hard as you possibly can, physically and mentally?

Surprise. You burn out, and you burn out hard.

This post took me weeks to write. I kept coming back to it, and hiding from it. Peeking at it through the hands over my eyes, and leaning closer to listen in despite the fact my fingers were firmly in my ears.

And while this was the only post this year that made me wince before hitting “Publish”, the conversations it started to spark were incredible. My inbox and Facebook comments filled with stories, particularly from women, about working themselves into hospital beds (then proudly working from those hospital beds), about bodies crumbling while deadlines were still being hit, and about hitting walls with such an impact it took them 6 months to recover.

So while it wasn’t the most natural thing to share when I pride myself so publicly on my own mental strength — it made me realize that sometimes hard work just can’t be the only route.

If there’s a collection of “posts that took on a life of their own” somewhere on the internet, I’d like to submit this to them for review.

This piece on the present and future of marketing in my chosen industry, borne of one comment I left in a FB group, and about 90 minutes of expansion on the points, quickly soaked up close to 20,000 views in the space of a couple of weeks.

It was unexpected. And kinda scary. And awesome.

Unexpected because it was such a quick, fiery piece to write, and because the topics discussed in this piece are not news to anyone who’s been in my industry a while. In fact some of them have been issues for years, they’re just getting hard to hide behind closed doors.

Kinda scary because I knew the people I was talking about in the post would read it… and I didn’t want to make anyone feel badly about themselves. I just wanted to tell the truth. But I also spent a few anxious nights worried I’d written myself out of a career.

Awesome because hey, who doesn’t like feeling like an “online influencer” for a whopping 5 days or so — like the things we’ve seen and said matter, confirming suspicious, putting hearts to rest, and are changing the way people look at things.

(Oh — and pissing people off. That was part of it too. But how good that feels varies moment to moment, and can sometimes stay stuck in the “fucking awful” position for prolonged periods. #Iamnotabadass)

But suffice it to say, of everything I’ve written, this was my most popular piece, as well as my most satisfying.

Sometimes when you say what’s on your mind, when you say what you’re seeing and what’s worrying you — people listen. And that just might be one of the best feelings around.

It certainly makes years spent in front of your laptop as a cog in so many digital machines feel less lonely and drone-like.

“It’s a running joke (among copywriters especially) that the biggest industry names are often the hottest messes on the back end… but I’m not sure it’s very funny anymore.

Even more worrying: These gigantic, nebulous “build your business online and brand and market yourself like a pro because that totally doesn’t take years to learn” programs are still being sold at high-ticket prices while their information hasn’t changed much from 2, 3, even 5 years ago.

And in a space that moves this quickly from one impactful strategy to the next?

That’s. Not. Good. Enough.

The people continuing to sell programs know this. Everyone who passed 9th grade Economics and learned about the law of diminishing returns knows this. Some just willfully ignore it.

We have to do better. We have to set an example. Especially if we claim to honestly give a damn about our “tribes”.

I carry one (fairly) huge and utterly irrational fear in my life: my fear of flying.

While I’ve spent a good chunk of my past and present on planes without incident, my fear is always with me; like a heavy weight rattling around inside the well-loved duffle bag of my soul.

As you might imagine, being the steward of a lifelong anxiety like this comes with a colorful spread of trials and tribulations.

One example: I’m the woman doing a shot of whiskey and slamming a beer at the airport bar — if I have time, and if there’s no client work to be done en route.

Another: I absolutely cannot sleep on planes, even on 10+ hour flights, which meant the one time I tried Ambien to welcome the sandman at 30,000 feet, gravity turned inside out for a few hours.

And yet another: For years I’ve had to explain to well-meaning to partners, friends, family members, and colleagues that while yes, I understand pilots are highly trained, and yes I’m more likely to die in the car on the way to the airport, and yes it’s a 1 in 3 million+ chance I’ll ever be involved in a fatal plane crash… that this is the problem with irrational fear: It makes 0 sense.

(Besides, in the age of the internet we should all realize humans are largely emotional creatures. Logical thought rarely slices through the tethers of illogical patterns — and no human being is without a wild superstition, fear, or a nearly-incomprehensible view or two.)

However: This fear of mine is not without its intellectually interesting attributes— namely, the way it’s aged with me in order to stay “alive”.

Much like the organism it’s tethered to (me!), my fear of flying has evolved. It’s heavy but it’s damn wily. It shifts. It adapts. It finds new bends in reasoning to sustain itself.

When the fear found me as a kid, it was simple: I was scared I would die. I didn’t want to die!

Then, as a teenager (during my brief and eager dance with Christianity), I began pursuing solutions and turned to God. I’d wear my cross necklace and pray before every flight for protection.

Unperturbed by Jesus, my fear promptly evolved: If I died? It now meant God was displeased with me and was taking me out of the human race. My fear even inflated itself by reminding me that if I wanted God’s favor? I’d better make sure I didn’t do anything too sinful right before a flight.

Fun!

Then I entered my 20’s… and things got really interesting.

By then, I’d been on and off enough flights for my logical brain to suggest, “Hey you know what? Maybe we should chill out.”

Not to be outdone, my fear evolved again.

I remember it so clearly.

As I stared nervously down at the clouds on a flight from JFK to Fort Lauderdale, wondering why I couldn’t just relax, my heavy, clunky Fear Brain turned slowly around and said clearly:

“In every flight we’ve survived, you’ve been afraid. Fear has now become part of our routine. So clearly: If I allow us to relax? The plane will surely crash.”

Uh-huh.

Fear had managed to convince me, in some sneaky way, that my anxiety was, in fact, keeping the plane in the air.

Nope, it wasn’t the engines, or the highly trained pilots, or the crew that kept the flight safe. It was me, with my magical powers of terror levitation, doing it.

In her case, this “magical thinking” was sparked by the sudden death of her husband while her daughter was in a coma. In my case, it was sparked by the stark reality of my fragile mortality a few miles above solid ground.

Are brains weird or what?

Now here’s the strangest part of all this (and my whole reason for telling you this story):

I realized recently that this type of thinking isn’t limited to my airline experiences. In fact, I’d been applying this adaptively unhinged thought pattern to my business every damn day.

It all clicked when a teacher of mine said something unexpected, but startlingly accurate on a group coaching call I was on:

“Heaviness, stress, fear, worry, and anxiety do not equal money.

You can make just as much money with lightness — enjoying the process of your work and business building, having fun, and doing what interests you.”

It sounds innocuous at first blush… but once the words really clicked, it was like my world froze for a second.

Wait… what?!

But…

Oh wow.

Damn.

I’ve spent a fair amount of writing time unpacking my own relationship to heaviness, a.k.a. workaholism and stress. I’ve talked about it here,here, and here, and about a million other places on various social platforms.

Make no mistake: I still think/know that having a powerful work ethic and deep stamina for the hustle is a fine, and relatively rare thing.

I still think/know if you can pick ONE superpower for yourself in this life, it should be an ability to out-work anyone.

I still think/know being a little scared of not being smart or good enough can be useful.

I still think/know if you want to run a business, you have to work hard, long, and often for a while.

HOWEVER.

What happens when the ball gets rolling? What happens when you’ve already outworked most of your competitors and are making money and doing OK after all?

Where does that fear go?

Much like my in-flight worry-wartism: fear likes having a welcoming host. So it evolves to make sure we still carry it with us.

Years ago, I had accepted fears as part of the constant process of running a business. And so, fear had stuck around where I’d made a home for it.

Exactly the same way my flying fear had evolved, as time went on and my traditional newbie-business-owner anxiety around stuff like pitching clients, speaking in public, or delivering drafts wasn’t necessary anymore — my fear adapted.

My anxiety, fear, and stress became more than symptoms. They became litmus tests for how hard I was working, or how much I cared about something.

(This is also partly why, regardless of situation or location, I put my hands up every time I hear that line from Post Malone’s Congratulations : “Worked so hard forgot how to vacation.”)

If I wasn’t doing some stuff I kinda hated, or pushing myself a little too hard, was I actually working?

If I wasn’t stressed out and uncomfortable, was I actually making things happen for myself?

Though I didn’t realize it at the time: The answer, to my heavy, illogical fear brain, was a resounding NO.

In my mind, if I let up my guard down for even a second, my life as an entrepreneur was over. If I wasn’t constantly afraid, the plane would crash.

On the flip side of the coin: When stuff feels good and is going smoothly to the point I catch myself feeling positive — I worry I’m slacking.

And whether you realize it or not? The same might be true for you.

I hear it all the time from both entrepreneurs, and friends from the traditional 9-to-5 world:

“Work? Yeah, things are going well, but…”

“I’m having a great time, but…”

“Money’s been awesome and it feels like stuff is really starting to flow finally, but…”

At the outset, it feels like that makes complete sense. And there’s almost a delicious drama to it.

I’m so realistic I believe all of my hard work, everything I’ve built from my relationships to my skill set, can and will collapse on top of me in an instant.

I’m so realistic I believe disaster is constantly imminent and the only way to combat it is to act like it’s already happening.

So you can imagine why I swirled my teacher’s words around in my head for weeks:

“Stress, fear, and anxiety do not equal money.”

God damnit she was right.

So why did it feel like she was wrong?

Why did this concept of “lightness” feel as clunky in my mind as another language?

I think I have an idea.

As business owners, we feel we should be mentally prepared or anything, right? For disappointment, for frustration, for everything melting down.

Rarely are we told to expect, or even prepare for ease.

Because business is not easy.

So we train ourselves to assume it’s all part of the grind, and turn ourselves into good peacetime soldiers, standing at attention in the sprawling fields of existence with our armor still on and our guns drawn, ready for anything.

We train ourselves to assume that without our heaviness, our stress, and our fear, we cannot — and perhaps don’t deserve to — succeed. That if we’re not constantly on high alert, the enemy (a.k.a. failure) will smell our complacency and ambush us in the night.

But, just like lingering terror of air disaster after hundreds of successful flights, after a certain point — you have to face that your fear may not be closely tied to reality.

The more I think this over, the more I realize that after a certain point, we need to learn to take a deep breath and say:

“I’m OK now… I’m allowed to feel good.

What else do I actually want that won’t feel painful to create?”

Surely, after all this stress and hard work, we owe ourselves more than just a moment of smiles and celebration? Maybe even more than a day, or a week?

Surely, after grinding to build our reputations and make money, we can have fun and relax into what we’ve built and earned for a bit? Maybe even for a lifetime?

So imagine with me, for a moment:

What would change in our lives, industries, and hearts if, instead of waiting for the next shoe to drop, we stayed on high alert for lightness, joy, and happiness?

What if we sought that every day with our work, instead of scrambling and surviving, and steeling ourselves for when it all goes wrong?

What would running businesses feel like if our “I’m doing great but…” sentences stopped before the “but”, and ended with a confident smile?

What if we treated pleasure and fun, genuine interest, and enjoyment as our litmus test for financial and personal success, instead of glorifying what we’ve managed to pull off as the result of our long suffering?

So far, I don’t have an answer for you.

I’m still a squalling infant in the school of welcoming lightness.

But I challenge you to consider, as we wander wide-eyed into 2018:

What could that kind of thinking change for you?

Who would you become if you prioritized fun over fanaticism, or genuine interest and excitement over heaviness and stress and constant fear?

What if, instead of fearing a touch of long-term relaxation will cause everything you’ve built to float away, you just laid your burden down and… allowed yourself to float instead?

Photo is of the author after someone else’s “success post” made her feel like a garbage person. Source.

Uh oh. It happened again.

Jimmy Jilliondollars just shared another one of those Facebook posts.

Maybe it’s a screenshot of some email or text from a client or customer, or the back end of their Shopify or PayPal.

Maybe it’s a selfie of them smiling or giving the thumbs up, or eyes closed with prayer hands talking about “gratitude” or “hustle”.

Maybe it’s some random photo of a pristine white sand beach neither of you have ever been to.

But either way, your stomach starts to churn a little… and you start reading.

“Another day in the life when you’re #BLESSED.”

“Hard work pays off.”

They begin.

The rest of the sentences probably read like this.

Short lines.

Above the fold.

So you click.

To read the rest of it.

On LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram.

Despite yourself.

And lo and behold: They wax on about being broke once upon a time/FINALLY finding a foolproof formula/hiring a team/changing the way the client looked at things/working with an ultra-expensive mystery mentor.

And then there’s a number drop. Phrases like “six or seven figures” get involved. And it inevitably ends in something like:

“This isn’t even unusual. We sign contracts like this/have happy clients like this/make this kind of money every day.

Want the secrets to how we did it? The link is in the comments/schedule a call/WE HAVE JUST A FEW SPOTS LEFT IN 2018, SO BOOK YOUR SLOT.

Sometimes it can feel like other people’s fat paydays or game-changing sales numbers slurp our mojo out through a low-self-esteem straw. It makes us worry we’re not good enough, or we’ll never be able to catch up.

So I say: Enough of that.

The thing about these success posts? They don’t tell the whole story. They’re not supposed to.

Because, chances are, the real story’s a lot less glamorous than those unnecessary heap of emojis convey.

Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches story. Everyone loves an underdog.

But when we can’t see the journey, or don’t think about the path it took for those raggedy underdogs to get there? We have a habit of turning against ourselves.

Our brains cruelly decide to skip over the reality of the sleepless nights or the thousands of hours and dollars they poured into making that success happen, and ask ourselves “Why am I not there yet?!”

So for today, I’ll be the you’re-not-trash fairy godmother, pulling back the curtain on the most common humblebraggy Jimmy Jillionaire success posts — so you can feel better, move forward, and love yourself and your journey a little more.

Common success post #1: “1 EMAIL I WROTE/1 TWEAK I MADE TO THIS FUNNEL MADE ME/MY CLIENT ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS.”

It sounds like magic, doesn’t it?

Oh my gosh!, we wonder. What was the one thing?

Let’s assume the poster is telling the truth (some aren’t). If so: good for the writer/strategist! They should be incredibly proud.

… But this statement also doesn’t take into account that success also isn’t 100% on the writer/strategist.

Remember, here’s what you’re not seeing:

The quality of the offer and how much trust the creator had built up with their community. If it’s an offer the community was asking for from a favorite expert? Of course they’re gonna jump on it.

The visibility of the offer, i.e. how big the creator’s list is, which platforms they’re using to present the offer, how affluent their community is, etc.

The price of the product. (A $50k launch for a $10k product is verrry different to a $50k launch with a $100 offer.)

How ready to buy their audience was before the email rolled out — which may have been the result of a recent event, preexisting fame, or any huge number of factors.

How many launches they’d run previously, and how many tactics had been proven and tested prior to this one email/funnel.

So remember: You’re not a failure if you can’t boast the same numbers as the result of “a single email or tweak” currently.

Take your time, track your stats, and when it does happen? Shout out about it.

Common success post #2: “I MADE ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS ON A PRODUCT LAUNCH.”

Yes, buuuut!

More goes into a product launch than a product and an idea. You don’t just drop something on the internet and watch cash roll in… unless you’re Oprah or Kim Kardashian.

Remember, here’s what you’re not seeing:

How much they invested in team and tech, and for how long. Many big-name launches begin their creative and strategic build-outs months in advance, and usually invest tens of thousands of dollars.

The past launch failures they’d been forced to learn from — because everyone has a “flop story”.

How much they spent on FB ads. This number is almost always WAY bigger than you think — even $50k-$100k in some cases, and prices are only going up.

What their break even numbers were…. which could have been as high as 50%-90%+ of the money they made on the launch.

What kind of meltdowns and frantic pivots happened behind the scenes, and how hard they had to push on sales calls and follow-ups to make their numbers.

Product launches are tough, and often unpredictable — period. So much of it comes down to timing and trial and error.

When he was first building his email list, Jason encouraged sign-ups using an iPad giveaway. In a way, it worked! Thousands of people signed up… but just not for his writing or insights. Those folks were there for the free iPad, so when he started sending out newsletters and offers? They weren’t buyin’. (And some were even actively annoyed.)

In the end? He deleted his subscriber list of 25,000 to start from scratch.

Don’t get me wrong: There are plenty of people out there with crazy-engaged lists tens, or even hundreds, of thousands strong.

However, in that case, here’s what else you’re not seeing behind the scenes:

The 10+ years that writer spent penning blog posts to basically no one in their PJ’s

The investments they made in paid traffic to attract people to them (ads, etc.)

The sweat it took to pitch countless media outlets to let them write posts and land features, so they could get themselves out there and in the spotlight front of new people

How hard they worked on their opt-ins/funnels to attract their dream customers and clients to them, and leverage all appearances/features

Success via email marketing isn’t a “biggest list wins” numbers game. It’s about how much value you can offer, to as many people who care as possible.

So as long as you’re serving and dishing the good stuff out to your peeps? You’re on the right track.

Now before I go, to all of those who’ve been Jimmy Jillionaires recently: BIG CONGRATS to you for your success, and sharing your journey. You deserve to shine and have your moment.

But for the rest of us? Don’t let people’s celebration posts dazzle you out of starting, or moving forward.

While we celebrate each other, even when we feel a bit down on ourselves, we must keep in mind every time without fail:

On the morning after my 28th birthday party, I woke up convinced I was going to die.

(Well — I know I’ll kick the bucket eventually. But as soon as I opened my eyes that April dawn, I was utterly convinced that “someday” was today.)

I reached up to my bedside table with trembling hands to check my phone. It was 5:30 AM.

I was covered in sweat. As I tried to take a deep breath, I felt my pores open again and icy perspiration drip further down my back. My stomach and chest were tightened to concrete with dread and I could barely breathe.

I was going to die today.

I looked over at partner next to me fast asleep. Should I wake him and tell him?

No. I’d sound ridiculous.

… But what if I died and I didn’t get a chance to warn him, or tell him how much I love him, or ask him if he thought I was completely out of my mind?

My eyes began to prickle with tears and I sat up, shoving my fingers through my damp, knotted hair.

I felt completely insane.

Breathe. Breeeathe.

OK, let’s rewind the tape.

Why did I, a perfectly healthy woman in my late 20’s, believe I was going to die on a random Sunday afternoon?

The short story is:

Because I had a hair appointment that day to go platinum blonde, and my usual colorist had cancelled on me due to a family emergency the night before.

Pause for reaction.

Yeah.

Now I was going to make a drastic hair change with a colorist I didn’t know, which can be the kiss of death for a high-risk process like platinum bleaching (all my ladies if you feel me help me sing it out).

The stakes were even higher for this dye job, because I had a photoshoot the following weekend. If I didn’t like the hair, I was completely screwed and it would be immortalized forever.

This was wrong. All wrong.

Maybe this was a sign I wasn’t supposed to get my hair done after all.

Maybe my intuition was telling me this wasn’t meant to be.

Oh god what would happen if I went?

Oh my god wait: What if it’s a sign from the universe that if I go, I’m going to die today?

Intellectually, a small part of me knew a shift in my colorist’s schedule was hardly cause for me to shuffle off the mortal coil. (The tiny, sane voice in the back of my mind was faint, but present.)

Yet there I was, having the worst kind of spring awakening at 5:30 AM, stuck in an utterly out-there thought loop. And the more I thought about it, the quicker it began to take shape in my head.

One little shift in plans made me feel as if my life’s entire structure was going to crumble on top of and around me.
It didn’t make any sense, but it felt so true it was terrifying.

I got out of bed and stumbled out into the kitchen on shaking legs to grab some water for my sandpaper mouth and squinted out the window into the gray light of the early dawn, trying to slow my heart rate down.

I wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my pajama shirt once, twice, three times.

What I didn’t realize then?

My brain was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I had hit a wall.

Crashed into it and flipped over the median, actually.

I was at the tail end of the most stressful few months of my career.

I was running not one but two beta rounds of my course, wrangling several client launches that had caught fire simultaneously, hitting the road to speak, trying to stay on top of an increasing flow of wonderful fellow writers and entrepreneurs in their earliest stages asking for my help, and desperately trying to somehow maintain my presence on my blog and in my inbox.

I was committing, following through, committing, and following through.

… And I was wearing myself down to cracks in the concrete.

Granted, I wasn’t always this way.

In middle and high school my teachers lamented I was “smart but lazy”. So when the real world loomed ahead of me, as I prepared to enter college, I decided: I would course correct.

And so I forced myself to learn… how to work.

How to “rise and grind”.

How to “hustle hard, and get my paper”.

Since then, I’ve prided myself in my ability to be tough, mentally and physically — which to me meant staying in the saddle even when I’m overloaded.

In my day-to-day, I’m as sensitive as the next human. Sometimes I worry whether you and your best friend like me. Sometimes before I go to sleep I get shaken awake by embarrassing moments that happened in middle school. I delete Facebook and Instagram posts because they feel stupid or I look fat. I cry during movies and TV shows.

“You have to take a breath and slow down. If you keep up like this you’re going to give yourself a stroke.”

I laughed.

It took me about 2 minutes to realize she wasn’t joking.

At the time, it made 0 sense. I was a card-carrying workhorse with workaholic tendencies — and I’d been historically rewarded for my relentless drive.

In college, my friends and I swapped stories of all-nighters and long hours spent at the library with tired pride.

As an intern or an agency newbie, working longer days and “going the extra mile” earned accolades and the possibility of promotions.

As a newbie freelancer, my ability to answer emails at 2 AM earned me a reputation as someone who “would do whatever it takes”.

As an entrepreneur my willingness to get shit done, no matter what the cost — including months of 14–16 hour days, and working 7 days a week — earned me my first 6-figures by 26.

My rep preceded me and I felt like finally, finally I was outstripping the “smart but lazy” label I’d been given, and becoming something else.

And yet, all the while, people telling me to slow down, to avoid burning out, and to take care of myself.

… And it was so deeply counter-intuitive to me it sounded like sabotage.

Of course I didn’t listen. Why would I have? Would you?

Whenever we’re hitting the gas hard, slamming the accelerator and shifting gears to reach our destination as the first, the fastest, or the most fabulous — everyone tells us there’s a wall ahead… But we can’t let ourselves slow down long enough to believe it.

All we can see is the stretch of horizon and the sky and the sunlight or star shine ahead, and our hands on the wheel.

We think:

The wall, if it’s even there, feels so far away — and you know what? If it finds us, we can probably blast right through it the way we do everything else. Duh.

Burnout? Sorry, no time for that, we’ve got too much shit to do.

(Sometimes shit handed to us by the same parties concerned about our health.)

Burnout is something that happens to other people. Other people who don’t have the kind of stamina and power that we have.

… And we are, of course, completely wrong.

And that’s why we find ourselves jolting awake, covered in sweat at 5 AM on a Sunday morning.

These moments are the signal flares of the terrifying truth that the idea of “mental toughness” does such an immaculate job of hiding:

That when that wall does find us and stop us in our tracks? No one can save us.

The crash is up to us alone to fix. Bystanders can give us wisdom and direction, but at the end of the day we must scrape our battered vessels off the ground to rebuild and start again.

That’s why we must stay ahead of it.

That’s why we must take it seriously.

That’s why we must learn to save ourselves.

So, on that sweaty gray Spring morning, I put my water cup in the sink with wobbling hands and made some notes.

I needed to get serious. I could no longer blast through tasks and to-do’s and grit my teeth until the finish line.
Because if I crashed? I wouldn’t just run a steamroller over my mental and physical health, I’d take a fair few teams with me in the process.

I made a few decisions:

I’d released 50% of my clients (with love).

(Of course a voice cried “What about the money?”, but I did the numbers and settled on a financial hit that would give the breathing room I needed.)

I took a long, hard look at the role I was playing on various teams, and what I really wanted.

I began to shape a vision of a future I wanted to create — though it would take time and patience, and a fair bit of cash.

I focused on intentionally crossing things off my list — the things I forced myself to do, like take certain calls, accept certain clients, even spend a certain amount of time in the gym, or make sure I did my own cooking a certain number of days each week — in order to free myself space to relax, to be calm, and to refresh.

I started to consciously put my phone away (a habit I’m reviving as of writing this post).

Now, things are better, though not quite solved. I’m learning to rethink, and reprioritize, every day.

I still slip, of course. Years of mental training takes time to undo. I’ve worked myself into exhausted tears more than once on the road to doing what needs to be done. I’ve stressed myself into a sleepwalking session (a new, delightful trick my brain has up its sleeve). I’ve been pulled aside and given warnings not to throw myself at the end goal so hard, once, twice, three times at least.

But the difference now is: I give myself no choice but to heed and act on those warnings.

It’s not perfect, but I’m doing my best to do the work.

A yoga teacher once told me: A warrior is only as strong as she is able to relax.

I rolled my eyes at the time, but my god: she was right, and we owe it to ourselves to believe it.

We must find the space between ambition and obsession, and untangle ourselves from the idea that more, longer hours are the key to our power.

We must know that while we can do things, a constant desire to prove, to outstrip, to out work and outlast is neither sustainable nor beneficial.

We must listen; to ourselves, to those ahead of us, and to the warning signs our minds and bodies send us.

In a world and an industry obsessed with achievement, the ability to let go; to reshape and rethink, is perhaps the toughest mental skill to master.

But if we’re burned up and strung out? We give our fears room to take us over — and when that happens, we lose our ability to create, to serve, and to build, and we’d be forced to start all over again.

Listen. Get focused. When you feel yourself getting close to the edge, set yourself up to be your own rescue; even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it’s not sexy, even if it loses you a couple grand in the process.